1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates in general to the telecommunications field and, in particular, to a telecommunications system, service control point and method capable of establishing specialized dialing plan(s) utilizing one or more of the unused country codes in the traditional international dialing plan.
2. Description of Related Art
Currently, one of the most significant concerns for telecommunications companies is the fact that there is a limited number of available area codes, seven digit telephone numbers, vanity numbers and 800/900 telephone numbers . . . . The telecommunications companies have cause to be concerned about the limited number of telephone numbers, because their customer base is continually expanding and there are a lot more people nowadays that require two or more telephone numbers to operate all of their different communications devices including the wired phone, mobile phone, pager, facsimile machine etc. . . . Therefore, it is just a matter of time before the telecommunication companies use up the limited number of phone numbers. Unfortunately, the telecommunications companies to date have failed to develop an efficient and economical way of increasing the number of telephone numbers that can be made available to their customers. As such, there has been and is a persistent need in the telecommunications field to develop an efficient and economical way of increasing the number of available telephone numbers.
The present invention includes a telecommunications system, service control point and method that can help a telecommunications company to effectively increase the number of available telephone numbers by using the traditional international dialing plan to establish one or more new dialing plans. In particular, the telecommunications system could translate the digits of a telephone call having an international access code and a previously unused country code to direct the telephone call to a service provider instead of a foreign country. Alternatively, the telecommunications system could translate the digits of a telephone call having an xe2x80x9caccess codexe2x80x9d followed by a digit sequence similar to the traditional international dialing plan to direct the telephone call to a service provider. The service provider could then manage one of the new dialing plans and offer a variety of services to their customers including, for example, global vanity numbers, global local number portability, global Internet access, and private dialing plans.